As demand for improved communication systems continues to increase so too will the demand for systems and components for reducing noise and error along a communications channel. Typical communications systems include a data source (i.e., transmitter), a communications channel, and a data destination (i.e., receiver). Factors such as noise corruption and channel distortion introduced by a communications channel, such as a hard disk drive (HDD), might be large enough to cause channel error. Channel error may include a scenario where a given receiver interprets the channel output as a value different than the channel input. For instance, the receiver may interpret the channel output as a 0 when in actuality the channel input is a 1, or vice-versa. The existence of channel errors in a communications system reduce throughput along the communications channel.
Low-density parity check (LDPC) coding operations are one means commonly used to detect and eliminate channel errors in a communications system. In this regard, a communications system may include a data encoder, a channel detector and data decoder. The channel detector may receive an encoded codeword from the encoder via the communications channel and then convert the codeword to a set of log-likelihood ratio (LLR) values, each LLR value representing the likelihood of a symbol to be a given value (e.g., 0, 1, 2, or 3). Then, the channel detector may transmit the LLR values to the decoder. The decoder may then perform one or more decoding operations on the received LLR values to generate the decoded codeword. In some settings, a tie is observed on two of the LLR values of a measured symbol, which introduces an additional source of error, thereby further limiting throughput of the communications system. Therefore, it is desirable to provide a method and system suitable for mitigating the impact of the existence of a tie condition at the decoder output of a communications system.